helloman

For the people interested in salsa, here are the various styles
as described by some experts(not me) in this field:

Puerto Rican style
Can be danced on the "One" or the "Two" beat of the music, but it involves a tremendous amount of very technical footwork ("Solo" if you’re from LA, or what they call "Shines" in New York.) There is more an emphasis on footwork, than in New York style, however, in recent years this can be argued by many a Mambo maniacs in Manhattan.

New York style
There is a strong Latin Hustle influence.
many Hustle dancers incorporated a lot of their moves into the Mambo style during that slow transitional period back to Salsa music in the late 80’s and early 90’s. Because Salsa is such a diverse dance, and there are no real "rules" of style, once you learn any style of dance, you tend to stick to that style when transitioning to Salsa.
The fancy footwork (shines) is really starting to become very strong in New York because of this influence. It is almost an even match now, whether they do more shines in New York than Puerto Rico.

Los Angeles style
Many of the showy tricks and Caberet moves are taken from Swing and Latin Ballroom, which is very prevalent and highly competitive and influential throughout the Mid and West Coasts. Unlike Miami, there are not many Cuban immigrants in Los Angeles, hence the Salsa dance style is predominantly a hybrid of Swing, Ballroom, and a soft Puerto Rican style. In New York, however, because of the high concentration of Puerto Rican immigrants, the Puerto Rican style is much like that of what is now New York style, Latin Hustle, or what we call "Mambo On-Two".

helloman

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<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="96%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD class=tdbackground vAlign=top align=middle><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=1 bgcolor=#000000 border=0><TBODY><TR><TD><TABLE class=tddetails cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>Brian Jolly & Kristina</FONT>
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=1 bgcolor=#000000 border=0><TBODY><TR><TD><TABLE class=tddetails cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>2003 CalStar - Porfirio and Laetitia

helloman

Richard Gere and Jennifer Lopez star in "Shall We Dance."

<IMG height=4 width=1>An accountant grows increasingly bored with his life and spying a beautiful dance teacher, decides to take some lessons to spice up his life. As the lessons progress, he finds himself falling further and further in love with the joy of dancing.

Movie trailer:
http://progressive.stream.aol.com/aol/us/moviefone/movies/2004/shallwedance_017729/shallwedance_trlr_dl.mov


This movie is a Hollywood remake of an older Japanese movie.
http://www.mediacircus.net/shallwedance.html

helloman

A nice ballroom dance web site:
http://www.ballroomdancers.com/Variation/Default.asp

helloman

A new movie with dancing, ie. mambo/salsa,
as background will be released soon.
I don't know whether it is good or not.
I thought that it might be of interest to the people here.

http://www.apple.com/trailers/artisan/dirtydancinghavananights/trailer/

helloman

A new movie with Cuban dancing as background
will be released soon.
I don't know whether it is good or not.
I thought that it might be of interest to the people here.

http://www.apple.com/trailers/artisan/dirtydancinghavananights/trailer/

helloman

奋勇前进, rainhorse and others,
   Usually for social dances like waltz, foxtrot,chacha, swing and a little discos,
you can go to Friend club's parties.
Although most partygoers are just moderately experienced in dancing,
they are all keen to dance
so it is easy to ask people to dance.
Other good things are that
the cost is relatively low,
the people speak Chinese
and you don't need to go with a partner,
You can look for the party schedule in
local weekly Chinese newspapers.
The next one is February 28.

There are also other social/line dance parties
in the Chinese community.
Among those, the ones organized by Vanier dance club are quite good.
Unfortunately the club only holds about 2 to 3 a year. If I am aware of any in the future,
I'll mention it here.

As for social dance clubs,
there are DoReMi, Le Rendez Vous, Le Dancing, La Bamba, Le Select classique, ... , etc.

For salsa dance clubs,
there are Salsatheque, 649, Cubano, ..., etc.

For disco, try Funkytown.

Whether you can ask strangers to dance or not
depends on the individual club culture.
In general, in salsa clubs,
most of the time, you can ask strangers to dance.
In social dance clubs, it varies greatly.
You usually can do so in DoReMi on Saturdays,
Le Rendez Vous and Le Select classique.

darren yu

你好, dancelover 我喜欢你对交际舞的理解. 看得出你也是个热心的人.如果你知道有什么可以以舞会友的活动请通知我. 谢谢!

rainhorse

me too,a green hand in this aspect but interested in it. if there are any activities and one green hand could be accepted,pls contact me at pebble5th@yahoo.com.

wontback

Hi helloman,

I am a newcomer, just wonder if U could tell me where can I find a palce for dance? THX a lot.